Mentor: Dr. Guillermina Walas-Mateo, Department of Modern Languages and Literature

When El Salvador received its independence, the country dealt with many hard economic issues. The majority of the population lived in poverty. El Salvador's government was constantly being taken over by military members who forced their way into office. On top of El Salvador's social problems, the country was constantly being invaded by neighboring countries. The production of coffee helped El Salvador to play a part in the world market and boosted its economy. The government built up the military to keep order and was able to concentrate on extending roads and rail lines, and providing health and educational services to its people. With such a good start to the 20th century, what went wrong within the country to cause El Salvador to become one of the world's poorest countries and made its people finally rise up causing a civil war? Through this paper, I observe that it was a series of factors that caused poverty and civil war, including: corrupt governments, bad economic decisions, depression, struggles for power, and poverty itself. The importance of this research is to learn about the mistakes made in history so that we make sure that history does not repeat itself in the future.